Here's the other paper I wrote for my masters...

Sex and Sexuality, Dita and Camille

"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth" - Oscar Wilde.1

In many ways, Prince and Madonna have lived parallel lives. Born in the same summer (Prince Rogers Nelson on June 7, 1958; Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone on August 16), both are from the Midwest of the United States, and both were endowed with larger-than life first names that they creatively exploited through use of sexual-spiritual dichotomy. As artists, they have created a personal mythology and successfully incorporated it into their performances. They are inveterate wearers of makeup and costumes, in concert and publicity photos. They have also been, at various moments of their careers, some of the highest-paid recording artists in history.2 The two collaborated musically on a Prince-written song for Madonna’s 1989 Like A Prayer album (Love Song), and even considered the possibility of working in a film together.3

Both gained fame with the help of exposure on MTV in the 1980s, and have, in turn, left a definitive mark on the art of the music video. In doing so, they are extraordinary creators of personae that explore the multitudinous and ever-changing facets of their artistic personalities. Both Madonna and Prince, in taking 1980s New Romanticism to an extreme degree, created personae that marked crises, or turning points, in their careers: “Dita,” of Madonna’s book Sex, and Prince’s “Camille,” an album project which came to epitomize the darker side of Prince’s personality.

Prince, a creator of spiritual worlds par excellence, would withdraw an album from public release that he believed was influenced by Camille and little time later, destroy this persona during a concert tour. Madonna’s Dita, avatar of the utopian sexual underworld created for the book Sex (1992), would provoke great controversy in the press and alienate her from her mainstream fans, especially younger ones. Both personae symbolized Romantic attempts to reunite eros with agape, and both failed, although under different circumstances.

Madonna, like Prince, had always privately engaged in a measure of formal religious observance. For example, both were known to pray before concerts.4 In the liner notes of Prince’s most notoriously “dirty” album, Dirty Mind, he gives thanks to God. Likewise, Madonna dedicates The Immaculate Collection to “‘The Pope,’ my divine inspiration.” Thus the two have become, not only creators of personae, but creators of entire worlds revolving around these.

Utopian Sex and Sexuality

Sex as the title of Madonna’s “pornographic” book, creates a world where women are free to redefine this very subject. Not coincidentally, a utopian notion enters the picture in the book’s introduction, sentence four:

We can love God, the entire earth, humanity, all kinds of things, but the best way human beings have to express love is to love one another.5

“Love is God, God is love,” says Prince, in Anna Stesia (Lovesexy,1988), his replacement for the Black Album. The very term Lovesexy itself is described as follows, in the liner notes: “The feeling u get when u fall in love not with a girl or boy but with the heavens above.” “Love,” in Prince’s usage, signifies agape, whereas “sex” or “lust” is eros. Thus, in his usage of the word “love” itself, the idea of “God” will always echo under the surface.

His first song to impart a detailed utopian spiritual statement was entitled Sexuality (Controversy album, 1981). This song detailed the first of several Prince-created worlds peopled by a “new breed” who would reunite the fractured principles of love in a higher Romantic ideal. Prince declares a “second coming,” where “everything goes.” No money or clothes are needed in this world. No clothes are needed in Madonna’s world of Sex either; Dita likes money, but that doesn’t stop her from spending a lot of time with people who appear either working class or denizens of an underworld sub-culture. Dita will sleep with people of both sexes, whether rich or poor.

In the introduction of Sex, Madonna states that in her sexual fantasies, there exists a “perfect world, a world without AIDS.” While not specifically addressing AIDS, Prince promises to take us to “another world… tonight,” where:

Sexuality is all u’ll ever need
…let your body be free

A few choice lines from DMSR (“Dance Music Sex Romance,” 1999 album, 1982) seem to sum up the carefree spirit intended in Sex:

I say do whatever we want
Wear lingerie to a restaurant,
Police aint got no gun, u don’t have 2 run.

Fetishization of the sacred is nothing new from Madonna. In the Like A Prayer (1989) video, she kissed a saint (or made love to him, depending on individual interpretation), and received the stigmata. Sex’s hedonism is mixed with religious sentiment. She calls Dita a “sister of mercy, our lady of head.” In the photo where she lies upon her back, tied down before a giant crucifix and flanked with candles, Dita appears a modern-day temple prostitute, a worshiper of Dionysus appeasing the forces of nature through ritualized sexual frenzy. They are seekers of divine grace through material pleasure-seeking, modern-day Epicureans, which one source defines as “believer(s) in pleasure as the highest good.”6 Dita is pure eros spiced with agape.

Sex is full of girlish boys. Some wear makeup, and to one Dita even attaches her own breast, through a clever mirror trick. By feminizing them, like a good priestess, Dita puts her men through ritual enlightenment, sending them, like all good Dionysians, back to the source: mother. The transvestite, says Camille Paglia, is “searching for God.”7

The sado-masochistic scenes are penitential in their grave formality. They may result in spiritual inspiration:

We could use the cage
I’ve got a lot of rope
I’m not full of rage
I’m full of hope
(Erotic, single included with Sex)

The practice of S&M also grants Dita goddess-like powers:

Only the one that hurts you can make you feel better
Only the one that inflicts pain can take it away.
(Erotic/Erotica)

Another similarity between the worlds of Sex and Sexuality is in racially egalitarian viewpoints. Prince’s Sexuality declares: “Don’t need no segregation / Don’t need no race.” Race seems irrelevant in Madonna’s scenes with Big Daddy Kane and Naomi Campbell, but mainly because their race becomes part of the décor. The photos of the three together are less about making any sort of a point about racial unity than to provide an artistic contrast, dark skin and hair framing Madonna’s whiteness. They are here to emphasize her stardom, as Divine Goddess and High Priestess of the Sex world, as much as any of the white people on the other pages.

Although neither Prince nor Madonna have been critically renowned for their acting abilities, both have displayed amazing onscreen charisma in film and video, and it is interesting to speculate on what sort of chemistry the two might have shared, had Prince’s film project come to fruition. After the completion of the Sign O’ The Times film, Prince planned a musical sequel to Purple Rain that eventually became the film Graffiti Bridge. Per Nilsen recounts the original storyline:

Prince intended to star in Graffiti Bridge as Camille Blue, while Madonna was to be Ruthie Washington and Cat8 a character named Vienna. “I was this girl that Prince really liked, but he was in love with Madonna,” remembers Cat. “I tried to come between them. She would give me notes and I wouldn’t give them to him. On the graffiti bridge you’d see all these famous musicians who’ve passed away, like Billie Holliday, while Madonna and Prince would walk over it. It was about how you can really get in touch with music.9

Here, it becomes apparent that Prince had cultivated a notion Romantic notion of Camille as a dreamer with a moodily musical name. He gives Madonna a nostalgic name which may have well suited a black jazz performer of an earlier generation, which is interesting in light of the fact that many people mistook Madonna for black, on first hearing her singing voice.10 Through Dita, Madonna further invokes Prince’s questionings in Controversy, “Am I black or white/ am I straight, or gay?”

The Persona & the Mask: A redefinition

“Feminism says, ‘no more masks’; Madonna says we are nothing but masks,” said Camille Paglia.11 However, Paglia does not differentiate between “persona” and “mask.”12 In contrast, Cheryl Walker, as regards the creative life of a poet, states that mask and persona are not always the same:

Persona becomes the operative and complex discourse about the mask though this is likely to occur only after the poet has achieved a certain degree of self-consciousness, with which she is aware of choosing among models to represent the particular image of herself she desires to project. When persona becomes distinguishable from mask, the poet has usually developed a sense of irony about her literary self that deserves recognition.13

As in the case of Walker’s analysis, Madonna’s most effective and memorable images of herself in “Sex” are those marked by an ironic humor that transcends politically correct messages about sexual diversity, such as the two photos of her ambling, casually and unselfconsciously nude with a water bottle and lady-like purse; or naked pizza-eating at a street stand. We see this also in Dita’s response to her doctor, when he asks if she has ever been mistaken for a prostitute: “Every time anyone reviews anything I do, I’m mistaken for a prostitute.”

In this analysis of Dita and Camille, I use the term “mask” as a subcategory of a given persona, each of which is capable of donning several different masks – sub-personae - while re-enacting parts in a self-defined sexual theater. Thus, Dita is a persona of Madonna, and the above example, “60s movie star,” is one of Dita’s many masks.

Madonna’s masks are well-known and profuse, from her early street waif “boy toy” incarnation to her “Marilyn,” as typified in the Material Girl video, to the Dietrich/lesbian, which she exploits somewhat in Sex, but mainly through girlfriend Ingrid Casarès. Some of Prince’s masks are lesser-known, but they are found in profusion, in every aspect of his career. He uses songwriting and producing masks, such as “Jamie Starr” and “Joey Coco,” in order to hide involvement in countless side projects. His numerous female protégés operated as extensions of himself, in a sort of persona-projection. Prince also made liberal use of literal masks, such as the dangling chain mask of the My Name is Prince video or the half-masks of Partyman. A “slave” mask was painted on one cheek from late 1994, until he was freed from his recording contract with Warner Bros in 1996. But his ultimate mask would appear in 1993, when he changed his name to a symbol: . Part of the spiritual evolution which led to that creation was influenced by a persona named “Camille.”

Evil Camille and Dita Dominatrix

In late 1986, Prince envisioned and assembled an experimental album with a sped-up voice. He planned to release it under the name “Camille.” He eventually decided against this project, and most of the songs were absorbed into other albums, namely Sign O’ The Times (SOTT, 1987).

The original 8-track Camille song list is as follows:

Rebirth of the Flesh (unreleased)
Housequake (SOTT)
Strange Relationship (SOTT)
Feel U Up (B-side of Partyman, Batman, 1989)
Shockadelica (B-side of If I was your girlfriend)
Good Love (Crystal Ball, 1997)
If I Was Your Girlfriend (SOTT)
Rockhard in Funky Place (Black Album, 1994)

U got the Look (SOTT), while not on the original list, belongs to the Camille persona as well, in its vocal style and strutting attitude. The only still-unreleased track is Rebirth of the Flesh, but its hook was reused in Walk Don’t Walk (Diamonds and Pearls, 1991). The sinister, low-voiced Bob George, from the Black Album, played a special role in concert as a distinct mask of Camille.

Prince had also considered a Camille film project, where he would play two different characters who were actually the two sides of a split personality. Only at the end of the film would it become clear that the two personalities belonged to the same person.14 This exploitation of what he has called his Gemini nature –“I’ve got two sides, and they’re both friends” (My Name is Prince, , 1992) – this notion of duality eventually led him to change his name to an unpronounceable symbol. He would later explain in a televised interview that “” was a manifestation of a second, hidden personality, developed in childhood.15

Prince had already experimented with a sped-up voice on Erotic City (B-side of Let’s Go Crazy). Erotic City could be considered a pre-Camille song, stylistically and thematically speaking. This idea is further substantiated by the fact that Prince used this song to lead off the first “evil” part of his Lovesexy concert tour. But Camille, in the end, is more than an altered voice: he represents an attitude.

Years later, a clue about the origin of Camille’s name surfaced in a 1997 Yahoo Online interview:

Yahoo Online: This may sound nuts, but does the Camille alter ego, which you used
on Sign O’ The Times, have anything to do with the famous
nineteenth-century hermaphrodite Herculine Barbin, who was
nicknamed Camille? If so, my younger brother will be very, very
happy, since he has spent roughly a decade trying to convince me of
this.
The Artist: Your brother is very wise.16
Prince’s hermaphrodite persona is therefore a foretaste of the future persona, “,” a combination of the astronomical symbols for the planets Mars and Venus, which are the commonly used signs for male and female.
More hints about this persona appear in an essay from the Lovesexy tour program. Here Prince said that Camille had influenced him to record the Black Album (1997), an album he withdrew and replaced only four months later with the one-track spiritual concept album, Lovesexy. The essay tells the story of “a boy named Camille,” who “didn’t know how 2 feel” and “took 4 granted all the nice things that he had.” Unsatisfied with those who appreciated him, “Camille set out to silence his critics” with an album of ultra-funky music in “the color black: strongest hue of all.” But then he realized that:

Spooky Electric was talking, Camille started 2 cry […] he had allowed the dark side of him 2 create something evil… […] Camille and his ego. Bob George.

He next calls out for the destruction of the devil figure Spooky Electric, “in the hearts of all who want love.” Peppered throughout the essay are song titles from the Black Album and Lovesexy.

In the Camille songs, the persona presents itself in a series of male and female masks. S/he is ambivalence personified. Strange Relationship is a prime example of this:

I came and took your love, I took your body
I took all the self respect U ever had
I took U 4 a ride and baby I’m sorry
The more U love me sugar, the more it makes me mad

If I was your girlfriend also features a ambivalent manipulator – “Would U run to me if somebody hurt U, even if that somebody was me?” This Camille is a “male lesbian” who dons a “girlfriend” mask because he envies the closeness that he imagines his would-be lover shares with her same-sex friends.

Bob George is an ironic mask, of the type Walker described above. He is Camille mocking himself, laughing at “that skinny mother-fucker with the high voice.” He could just as well be the protagonist of Rockhard in a Funky Place, picking up prostitutes.

In the only song of this series that actually mentions Camille by name, Shockadelica features a female sexual enchantress:

The girl must be a witch
She got your mind, body, and soul hitched

She bears a stunning resemblance to Dita, in many ways. She “never wears a stitch.” Dita would “like to put you in a trance,” and Camille’s “got you in a trance.” Dita likes to tie up her lovers, Camille’s got hers “tied with a golden rope” and begging for mercy. Dita says, contradictorily:

I’ll be your sorceress, your heart’s magician. I’m not a witch, I’m a love technician.

Both are controllers:

Dita: Give it up
Do as I say.
Give it up and let me have my way.

Shockadelica: When this woman say dance you dance…
[…]
But you just can’t leave her alone
As though you got no mind of your own

Shockadelica ends by questioning the nature of the experience:

Is this a dream
Or is this real
Or is this just a mirage you feel

Sex begins with a near-immediate admission that this book is nothing more than fodder for fantasy. “In this book, nothing is true,” Madonna says. “I made everything up.”
In his 1996 Yahoo Online interview, Prince contrasted Shockadelica with more recent spiritually-focused work:
YIL: Do you think Shockadelica is your best song? If not, why not?
TA: Shockadelica is about a witch. The Holy River is about redemption. I am no judge.
Prince grew dissatisfied with Camille in what he referred to in the Lovesexy tour brochure as “Blue Tuesday.” In a 1990 Rolling Stone interview, he referred to a “dark night of the soul” where he claims he received a revelation from God. From there, he decided not to release the Black Album:

"I was very angry a lot of the time back then," he continues, "and that
was reflected in that album. I suddenly realized that we can die at any moment, and we'd be judged by the last thing we left behind. I didn't want that angry, bitter thing to be the last thing. I learned from that album, but I don't want to go
back."17

Therefore, on the Lovesexy tour, Prince felt justified in destroying this persona. During those live performances, attitude, as much as costume and hairstyle changes, marked each change of mask. The first part of the concert features Camille as an impish seducer, shameless yet disarming, an evil Mozart in his effortless musicianship and legendary skirt-chasing. He leers, mugs and flirtatiously bats his eyelashes. His hair is styled in a libertine’s pigtail. The second evil mask is the menacing Bob George, who hides half of his face behind outrageous pimp-style sunglasses worthy of Bootsy Collins. Bob also sports the pimp’s bulky furs, as does dancer Cat in this concert sequence, who dons the mask of Bob’s spurned lover. Bob shoots Cat, and his led off himself at the end of the first part, to die.
The “resurrected” Prince, is a Christ-like figure who appears in the second, more spiritually-oriented portion of the concert. He is quieter in facial expression. He is also a mask, but not one belonging to Camille, who Prince considered a purely evil character. His hair is long and loose, not unlike the traditional image of Christ as seen in religious art. His costumes, while still romantic, are simpler, less foppish and vain than that of the “Evil Mozart.”
The “Christ” of the concert’s second holy half is a mask belonging to “Prince” as the Artist – a persona in its own right - not to be confused with Prince the private individual. The Christ mask is whom Prince would like the audience to believe he is, whereas Camille is whom Prince believes his audience would like him to be. “Was I what you wanted me to be?” He repeatedly taunts the audience, during the Camille segment, echoing a line from Controversy. Camille is therefore a culmination, a climax of the “badness” that fans and critics alike came to expect from Prince.
Likewise, Sex may be a response to what Madonna’s critics think she really is; even if she insists, in the introduction, that she just made the whole thing up. “My pussy has nine lives,” she shouts.

Dita goes to more extremes to make these points than Camille ever does, even in his/her most graphic lyrics. She experiments, with varying degrees of success, with a full menu of sexual options, from the commonplace to the somewhat more unusual or sinister: lesbianism, anal sex, phone sex, strip clubs, all kinds of S&M, golden showers, a rape scenario, bestiality and near-pedophilia. It is a catalog of sex and perversion in no particular order, with no thread of continuity other than the letters she sends to Johnny, with whom she carries on a regular three-way relationship which includes “girlfriend” Ingrid.

Dita’s strong point is self-conscious, ironic humor, such as in the dream she recounts to her psychoanalyst, where she addresses her boyfriend with: “How could you fuck someone besides me? Even worse, how could you fuck Cyndi Lauper?”

Some familiar masks reappear, in ironic ways. For example, the “Marilyn” mask of Material Girl comes back in an X-rated version, the chorus boys as naked male strippers. In one of the book’s few color pictures, we see Dita as an adolescent propping up her breasts, wearing a dark lipstick reminiscent of Madonna’s first “boy toy” persona.

In spite of Dita’s gender-bending experimentations with sexual perversity, her masks remain undeniably female: the dominatrix, the glamourous 60’s movie star, the lesbian, etc. Cheryl Walker might attribute this to female awareness of the limitations of a particular mask a female may feel “constrained” to wear.18 Madonna, constrained? In spite of her experiments with perversity (which seem half-hearted, in the end), it seems that garden-variety heterosexuality may means the most to Dita after all. “I think I have a dick in my brain, I don’t need to have one between my legs,” she says. And yet, gender-bending in Sex is generally playful, and involves the participation of another sexual persona, the “girlfriend” who also pursues men. In Sex Madonna speaks of loving and “feeling close” to girlfriend Ingrid, but wants to continue pursuing sexual games and liaisons with males, with or without her girlfriend’s participation. In the book’s finale - and one of its funniest moments – Dita upbraids Johnny for ruining her macho expectations of him, when she catches him at the receiving end of oral sex… with girlfriend Ingrid’s crush, Ben.

Dita is very beautiful, and very busy, but she forgets to do one thing: seduce. Sex lacks the cajoling quality of other provocative works, such as Justify My Love or even Like A Virgin. In Sex, Madonna abandons dreamy romanticism for a harder-edged, almost masculine approach, and even the song Erotic – a version of Erotica - that came with the book has its feminine ending removed in the title, as well as its lulling chorus: “Erotica, romance, I’d like to put you in a trance.” In contrast, the chorus of Erotic simply issues orders: “put your hands all over my body.”

Dita and Camille: Romantic failures?

Dita was a notorious critical failure. Prince became so ashamed of Camille that he destroyed this persona himself. Does this mean these personae somehow failed, or were they necessary steps in a higher spiritual quest, artistic and/or personal? Romanticism seeks a union of physical love, or eros, with agape, or the higher, spiritual love. The true attainment of such may be impossible in the Occidental cultural artistic tradition, where a body/spirit dichotomy prevails.

Regardless of whether or not Madonna regarded Sex as a failure, her life and career would take a very different turn in the years that followed. After the birth of her daughter, Lourdes, in October, 1996, Madonna adopted a new spirituality somewhat estranged from her Catholic roots. The New Age spiritual personality which came forward on her next album, Ray of Light (1998) might have been viewed as just another superficial mask, had it not been for her much-publicized study of the Kabala (which also involved the adoption of a new name, that of Jewish Queen Esther). Finally, she would embrace the trappings of a conventional married life, with director Guy Richie in December 2000, a few months after the birth of their son (around the same time as her album Music was released).

Prince would likewise continue to explore spiritual dimensions through his music, which had a bearing on his personal life as well. He married twice, lost a child, explored New Age religious ideas and became a Jehovah’s Witness in the summer of 2002.

In summary, the creation and destruction of Camille was a way for Prince to pursue artistic and spiritual enlightenment. In Rockhard in a Funky Place, Camille admits that he is searching for God, not unlike Dita’s cohorts, in a house of prostitution:

All you’re looking for is love
Or a reason to believe there’s a God above
Pretty soon you’ll get enough
And head back 2 a life so tough…

Madonna could go no farther than Sex without completely losing all mystery – and thus starpower - so her erotic extremes had to halt at this point. Her latest utopian messages resemble her oldest ones. “Music makes the people come together,” (Music, 2000) she sings, much in the same vein with which she once invoked listeners to take a “holiday.”

Notes

1

2 Madonna and Prince share this distinction with Michael Jackson, another artist born in the summer of 1958. Georges-Claude Guilbert, Madonna as Postmodern Myth (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2002) 2.

3 After reading the script, Madonna unequivocally refused to participate, telling Prince he was “stupid” and calling the script “a piece of shit.” It apparently took Prince 3 years to get over the shock. Per Nilsen, Dance Music Sex Romance: Prince, The First Decade (London: Firefly, 2004) 295

4 In the Sign O’ The Times concert film, Prince is seen praying with his band.
Madonna praying before concerts: Georges-Claude Guilbert, Madonna as Postmodern Myth (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2002)

5 Translations are mine, from the French version of Sex.

6 “Epicurean.” Will Durant Foundation, 15 April 2005

7 “A woman putting on men’s clothes merely steals social power, but a man putting on women’s clothes is searching for God. […] Mothers and fathers are not in the same cosmic league. Fatherhood is short, motherhood long, for earth is a mother of ever-changing costume…” Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (London: Yale UP, 1990), 90

8 Dancer Cathy Glover, who worked with Prince in the late 1980s, most importantly in the Sign O’ The Times concert film and the Lovesexy tour.

9 Per Nilsen, Dance Music Sex Romance: Prince, The First Decade (London: Firefly, 2004) 295

10 I did; the song was “Holiday.”

11 Camille Paglia, Sex, Art and American Culture: Essays (London: Penguin, 1993) 5.

12 Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (London: Yale UP, 1990) xiii

13 Cheryl Walker, Masks Outrageous and Austere: Culture, Psyche and Persona in Modern
Women Poets (Bloomington : Indiana UP, 1991) 11.

14 Per Nilsen, Dance Music Sex Romance: Prince, The First Decade (London: Firefly, 2004) 267.

15 The Oprah Winfrey Show, NBC. 21 Nov. 1996, Transcript, 5 Sept. 2005.


16 “Yahoo Online interview,” Prince In Print, 1997, 10 Sept. 2005
17 “Rolling Stone (RS 589),” Prince In Print, 1990, 10 Sept. 2005

18 Cheryl Walker, Masks Outrageous and Austere: Culture, Psyche and Persona in Modern
Women Poets (Bloomington : Indiana UP, 1991) 11.


Works Consulted

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Guilbert, Georges-Claude. Madonna as Postmodern Myth. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2002.

Madonna. The Immaculate Collection. 1990. Sire/Warner.

--- “Bedtime Story.” Bedtime Stories. Sire/Warner, 1994. Music video. Dir. Mark Romanek.
Yahoo Launch videos. 2005. 15 May 2005.

--- “Erotica.” Erotica. Sire/Warner, 1992. Music video. Dir. Fabien Baron.
Yahoo Launch videos. 2005. 15 May 2005.

--- “Express Yourself.” Like A Prayer. Sire/Warner, 1989. Music video. Dir. David Fincher. Yahoo Launch videos. 2005. 15 May 2005.

--- “Frozen.” Ray of Light. Sire/Warner, 1998. Music video. Dir. Chris Cunningham.
Yahoo Launch videos. 2005. 15 May 2005.

--- “Justify My Love.” The Immaculate Collection, 1990. Music video. Dir. Jean-Baptiste
Mondino. Yahoo Launch videos. 2005. 15 May 2005.


--- “La Isla Bonita.” True Blue. Sire/Warner Bros, 1986. Music video. Dir. Mary Lambert.
Yahoo Launch videos. 2005. 15 May 2005.

--- “Like A Prayer.” Like A Prayer. Sire/Warner Bros, 1989. Music video. Dir. Mary
Lambert. Yahoo Launch videos. 2005. 15 May 2005.


--- “Like A Virgin.” Like A Virgin. Sire/Warner Bros, 1984. Music video. Dir. Mary Lambert.
Yahoo Launch videos. 2005. 15 May 2005.

--- “Oh Father.” Like A Prayer. Sire/Warner, 1989. Music video. Dir. David Fincher
Yahoo Launch videos. 2005. 15 May 2005.

--- and Steven Meisel. Sex. 1992. New York: Warner.

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The Oprah Winfrey Show. NBC. 21 Nov. 1996. Transcript. 5 Sept. 2005.

Paglia, Camille. Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson.
1990. London: Yale UP

---, Sex, Art and American Culture: Essays. 1992. London: Penguin, 1993.

---, Vamps and Tramps: New Essays. 1994. New York: Random.

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--- Lovesexy Tour Brochure, 1988. Prince in Print. 10 Sept. 2005

--- Sign O’ The Times. 1987. Warner Bros.

--- Sign O’ The Times (the film). Dir. Prince. Prod. Robert Cavallo, Joseph Ruffalo, Steven
Fargnoli.1987.

--- The Black Album. 1994. Warner Bros.

Prince.org. 2005. 10 Sept. 2005.

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Prince in Print.

Stewart, Jenny. “Missing in Action (Gay MIA): Ingrid Casares.” Queery.com, Gay &
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MIA-old>

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Women Poets. 1991. Bloomington : Indiana UP.

copy > save > slice some cake > get coffee > packet of ciggies > and enjoy this

Go on Heiress with your bad ass! I have really been looking forward to this! *gets some orange juice and coffee cake*

damn girl! do u do all ur papers on pop stars?

Moonwalkbjrain said:

nope, i only study artists.

IstenSzek said:

mmm, cake for me too. i've had too much coffee recently.

purpleizpassion said:

well, looks like we're having us a big ol' cake party!

Heiress said:

well, nothing more comfy than sitting at your computer
reading something interesting, having a hot drink and
some cake

As far as term papers go, this is top notch. Very well written and properly referenced. My only problem with it (and with lots of scholarly work) is that it's a bit mechanical in its conclusions. For instance, artist A says x -- x is quoted and therefore the closest thing to the truth, therefore here's everything you need to interpret x. There's a larger context that's harder to consider, especially Prince and Madonna having based their careers on controversy, Prince's desire to release more music, which may have been one of the factors behind the birth of Camille, Madonna's obvious strategy to shcok the world every now and then. These factors call into question whether they were completely candid when they talked to the press -- was the interview another round of persona-shaping, for instance? But with the constraints of term papers, I understand how you had to stick to the evidence.

That was one hell of a read. I enjoyed that a lot!!!! Thanks, I grade that A++++!!!

Heiress...

The dedication to the Pope was for two reasons.

Christopher Ciccone, was refered to as the Pope by Madonna and her friends, because he was her artistic director for her carear from 85-96 and everything had to pass through him before it got to Madonna for final approval.

Second the Pope had try to ban Madonna's Blonde Ambition tour during it's run through Italy. So it was kinda thank you for the free publicity. Madonna has always expressed a distain for the Church... even though both of her children have been baptised to apease her father.

Heiress said:

ahhh i c!

anyway now that i've taken the time to read the whole thing i must say.....that was BEAUTIFUL!!! really it was a great read, i loved it! u deserve an a+ to the billionth power! and if teach dont give u one he/she sucks! lol
btw: what are u studying?

Aerogram said:

Yep yep yep... my advisor strongly warned me against "psychologism" several times - difficult when it comes to artists like Prince and Madonna... who come close to mirroring their inner life in their work... and of course, there's much room for trickery in all that.

ehuffnsd said:

I was really hoping you'd comment on this thread!
I knew there had to be something else to that "pope" reference, thanks for the info.

I would characterize her feelings for the Catholic Church as ambivalent. To spend so much time violating her heritage, as it were, she has had to love it deeply on some level.

Militant said:

Thank you.

Moonwalkbjrain said:

Thank you dear; my advisor (who did grade me very generously) is the 20th century music specialist, and an old Prince fan who lost interest around the Graffiti Bridge era. I'm getting him back into the newer things. He was never a fan of Madonna until "Ray of Light."

My major is English with a minor in World Civilizations; I like history & culture viewed in the long term, which includes recent history, like pop culture.

Heiress said:

sorry it was a good read... my bf dumped me last night. so i was being bitter.

ehuffnsd said:

Great paper, and a fascinating study. I've never seen anyone really delve into the Dita character before, as I think the general public completely missed it. Dita and Camille being compared and contrasted is quite brilliant, as these were the two most dynamic, fleshed-out of each artist's characters.

Of course, it should be mentioned (and you and I have discussed this before) that Prince and Madonna both took a page from Bowie with these side personas. Prince and Madonna were both products of the New Romantic movement (Prince much more so, Maddy only peripherally) that sprang up in the wake of Bowie. Bowie's characters were fully realised, and often seemed quite seperate from his core personality (or, at the very least, representing a small aspect of his personality). Dita and Camille were more hyped-up representations of Maddy and Prince, not dramatically different from themselves. Dita was Madonna's sexual side amped-up, while Camille represented Prince's inner conflicts.

JediMaster said:

I don't think we've really ever seen who Prince or Madonna truely are. They both have managed to keep their personal side out of their Mythologies. Sometimes I even believe that both of their current spirtuial paths are chances to do something different with their myths. In a type of overt sexuality they have both just go the other way as a way to stand out.

I think the modern pop era is missing stars that have a kind of a legend involved

ehuffnsd said:

To a certain extent this is true, although I do believe that their personal mythologies are quite an insight into who they really are. Prince especially loves to take any event occurring in his life and weave a sort of epic story around it. TRC is just the latest example of this.

great stuff

Love Song was written by Prince AND Madonna though

JediMaster said:

I have to class Madonna as a Romantic, artistically-speaking, and Dita is decadently so. You're right about Bowie, of course. His sexual personae, in contrast with his New Romantic spawns, would make a great paper, don't you think? I'm planning to start some preliminary research on this subject - in conjunction w/ the art of video - while I'm here in the States...

ehuffnsd said:

Madonna moreso than Prince, I'd say...

LightOfArt said:

Thank you, and point taken. I am not quite expert on all this yet.